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I'm in favor of college debt forgiveness or partial forgiveness, but I want to offer a cautionary tale that I think is relevant to implementation. The devil is always in the details.
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Alaska's permanent fund dividend is instructive. In the early years of the APFD, it didn't take long for a certain airline company with "Alaska" in its name to work out a great deal (for them) with the state.
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The deal: Instead of getting a permanent fund dividend check, residents could request a flight voucher (on that airline, naturally) "worth" more than the dividend. So, instead of a gvt check for $1000, residents might get $1200 in flight credit. (Example is made up.)
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What's the problem? IIRC the flight vouchers expired, so many went unclaimed. More problematic: the airline company, which at the time had a near monopoly on flights in AK, sets the price of flights. It could raise sticker price on flights to the value of the vouchers. Magic.
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The analogy with college debt relief isn't perfect. Students who have completed schooling can't go back and shop around. Students who haven't started can choose from 3000+ colleges and universities in US alone, tho for various reasons a given student's choice set is smaller.
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But: Continuing students face huge transaction costs -- economic, educational, social -- to shopping around. Most students don't attend Uni X for 3 years then say, "the deal is better at Uni Y so I'll transfer." Unis also make transfers costly through their credit policies.
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My point: If there is a college debt relief program, it needs to be structured to prevent unis from raising the effective tuition on current students who are getting debt relief, essentially playing the same voucher game that companies did with the AK PFD.
/fin.
/fin.
